{"id":1882,"date":"2003-10-26T16:23:41","date_gmt":"2003-10-27T08:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/10\/27\/ash-to-ash-dust-to-dust\/"},"modified":"2019-12-06T10:14:59","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T18:14:59","slug":"ash-to-ash-dust-to-dust-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/10\/26\/ash-to-ash-dust-to-dust-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Ash to ash, dust to dust"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:13039,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/boingboing.net\\\/2003_10_01_archive.html#106722521652445023&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:13040,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/fire.textamerica.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20130814013235\\\/http:\\\/\\\/fire.textamerica.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-12 05:05:13&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 08:02:17&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 08:02:17&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:13041,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.seanbonner.com\\\/blog\\\/archives\\\/000583.php&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.seanbonner.com\\\/blog\\\/archives\\\/000583.php&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:13042,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.avo.alaska.edu\\\/avo4\\\/atlas\\\/Redoubt.htm&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/chat.avo.alaska.edu\\\/avo4\\\/atlas\\\/Redoubt.htm&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:13043,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.avo.alaska.edu\\\/avo4\\\/atlas\\\/Spurr.htm&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20190121132816\\\/https:\\\/\\\/avo.alaska.edu\\\/avo4\\\/atlas\\\/Spurr.htm&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/chat.avo.alaska.edu\\\/avo4\\\/atlas\\\/Spurr.htm&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 08:02:16&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-04 08:02:16&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2003\/10\/californiafires.jpg\" title=\"California fires seen from space\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"California fires seen from space\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2003\/10\/californiafires-thumb.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/boingboing.net\/2003_10_01_archive.html#106722521652445023\" title=\"Phonecamming the fires in LA and San Diego\">Boing Boing<\/a> pointed me to this satellite picture of the smoke plumes from the California fires. Just incredible. There&#8217;s also a <a href=\"http:\/\/fire.textamerica.com\/\" title=\"Southern California Wild Fires\">photoblog<\/a> of pictures of the fires. Neat and scary stuff.<\/p>\n<p>Forest fires are something that I don&#8217;t really have a whole lot of experience with. They&#8217;d hit Alaska from time to time, but rarely (if ever) came anywhere close enough to Anchorage to cause any major concern. Occasionally there&#8217;d be a decent conflagration out in the Mat-Su valley (about 45 minutes outside of Anchorage), but most of the time, it wasn&#8217;t a major issue in town.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2003\/10\/wafires2001.html\" title=\"Clouds from the 2001 Washington fires\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Clouds from the 2001 Washington fires\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2003\/10\/wafires2001-thumb.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"100\" align=\"left\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Not long after I moved down here to Seattle, my friends <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2001\/08\/pie_ghosties_sc.html\" title=\"Pie, ghosties, scots, and naked girls (kinda)\">took me out<\/a> to see the Bare Naked Ladies at the Gorge near George, Washington. That summer there were forest fires raging over Washington, and we could smell the fire in the air as we were driving out. At one point during the drive, the sky was bisected &#8212; clear and blue on one side, and murky with smoke on the other, nearly enough to blot out the sun. This picture doesn&#8217;t really do it justice, but it was incredible to see.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2003\/10\/anchorageash.jpg\" title=\"Ash covers Anchorage\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ash covers Anchorage\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/graphics\/2003\/10\/anchorageash-thumb.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"101\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The stories posted of people coming out to find <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seanbonner.com\/blog\/archives\/000583.php\" title=\"It's raining ash, hallelujah\">ash covering everything<\/a> do sound very familiar, though &#8212; only for me, it was due to volcanoes. While I missed the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avo.alaska.edu\/avo4\/atlas\/Redoubt.htm\" title=\"Mt. Redoubt\">Mt. Redoubt<\/a> eruption in 1989\/90 due to galavanting around Europe, in 1992 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avo.alaska.edu\/avo4\/atlas\/Spurr.htm\" title=\"Mt. Spurr\">Mt. Spurr<\/a> erupted not far outside of Anchorage, sending a cloud of ash all over the city. Unfortunately, I didn&#8217;t get quite as good a look at the effects as I could have.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d spent the day working at Fireweed Theaters, slinging popcorn at the snack bar. Got off my shift in the afternoon, probably around 5 or 6, and caught a ride home with a friend. As she was driving me home, we could see the sky darkening as the ash cloud moved in over the city. I had long hair at the time, and as we were heading across town, I wanted to let it down. I took the ponytail holder out of my hair, shook my head &#8212; and suddenly my glasses, which were a little old and not as tight as they should have been, went flying out the open window of the car and underneath the tires of the car behind us. Crap.<\/p>\n<p>We pulled over and rescued what pieces we could, but the glasses were trashed. Given that I&#8217;m legally blind without my glasses, I spent the next day being driven around and getting new glasses, living my life in an out of focus, ash-grey world. I was a little bummed that I couldn&#8217;t see the ash clouds more clearly &#8212; it&#8217;s not exactly something that happens every day &#8212; but I did get to see some of the aftereffects as the cleanup got underway.<\/p>\n<p>Just more of the oddball fun of life in Alaska, I suppose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The stories posted of people coming out to find ash covering everything do sound very familiar, though &mdash; only for me, it was due to volcanoes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}